Community Outreach

Equipping young people with the skills to succeed in the work world is important, but without self-confidence no skill set will help a person rise out of poverty or change the world with a breathtaking idea.

That’s one of the lessons that’s been so obvious to Estelle Day as she helps guide Alcatel-Lucent’s global signature program, ConnectEd, as its program director. ConnectEd helps participants, mainly young adults, enter the work world with the education and tools they need to succeed.

“It often strikes me that across all the different contexts that ConnectEd works in, and all the different types and backgrounds of youth, one of the most commonly cited changes brought by the program is self-confidence,” she noted in a recent interview with Bishalakhi Ghosh, the director of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation that is posted on the Alcatel-Lucent blog site. The Foundation started ConnectEd two years ago with World Education.